Tuesday, 17 January 2017

Monologues, by Elizabeth Kay

The monologue is a form on its own, and Alan Bennett is its
master. It’s really a dialogue with someone or something, although the
co-respondent never speaks and is frequently not even there. The recipient may
be the character itself, of course, or a facet of it. The monologue follows all
the dramatic rules, therefore, and needs conflicts, tensions and resolutions as
would a play. But just because we’re used to thinking of monologues as set pieces
to camera doesn’t mean that they can’t work extremely well in print. The
character does not necessarily have to be alone – although if other people are
present the subject is at liberty to ignore them.

There is
usually some debate about the veracity of the information being conveyed – a
single-sided view often implies that other versions of the same scenario exist,
and provides plenty of opportunities for irony. Your character needs an
individual voice to be truly memorable, and this may mean using such devices as
repetition, malapropisms, unfinished sentences, non-sequiturs, catch phrases,
digressions, obsessions and evasions. If you can’t produce an individual personality
by using one or more of those you’re not trying!

Consider
your character’s status in life, and how this influences the way they see their
situation. Has their experience of life differed radically from what they were
brought up to expect? Do they really project the image they think they project?

Think about
the situation in which you place your subject. You could use a well-worn device
such as a mirror, and then make it that bit different. Is the mirror cracked? A
distorting mirror at a funfair? An heirloom? A shiny kettle? You could use an
imaginary friend, a corpse, a teddy bear. You could get surreal and address
anything from your left elbow to a tube of toothpaste. You can make your
character just start talking out loud – but think about whether you would do
the same thing yourself in the same situation. If talking out loud seems silly
to you, it will sound unconvincing to everyone else. Loonies are the exception,
of course. They’ll talk to anyone.

Creating a
character who can’t communicate with anyone at all opens up lots of opportunities.
I was placed in a Bridport competition a long time ago with this story called Ducks. This is an example of someone who
is treated as a loony because of her
appearance, although she’s anything but. And it goes without saying that a
monologue has to be written in the first person.

Ducks

Every Thursday she comes for me, in her pale tweed coat and
her sensible shoes. She has thick legs that finish at the knees, where the coat
takes over. I’ve never seen her without it. She replaced the tall one with the
protruding teeth. No one tells me their names.

We always
go the same way, to the park. Her stride never varies. We stop by the lake and
she sits on the green metal seat and throws pieces of bread to the ducks. Sometimes
the ducks come, and sometimes they don’t. When they don’t come she purses her
lips and folds the rest of the bred back into the bright waxed paper with great
care, doubtless reflecting on their ingratitude. Then she puts the bread back
into her brown leather bag. I’ve often wondered what she does with it after that.

They get me
ready for her after dinner. They brush my hair (what there is of it) and wipe
the food away from around my mouth, and then they stand one on either side of
the wheelchair and lift so that they can put on my coat. They place a tartan
blanket over my knees, whatever the time of year. It’s not to keep me warm,
it’s to hide my legs. Not for my sake, you understand, but for hers.

The black
nurse is the kindest, the one whose skin looks like the polished wood of the
bentwood chairs in matron’s office. They call her Arlene. She calls me Ducks.
I’ve never really understood why she addresses me in the plural.

I have no
visitors, except for the woman in the tweed coat. I never have had. Sometimes I
wonder if there is a family anywhere, a sister, a nephew maybe. I expect my
mother died long ago. And would anyone have been able to see a resemblance
between us? I doubt it.

I am no
stranger to my face, not after more than seventy years. Of course, it lacks the
symmetry of other people’s, but I’m quite fond of it. The mouth pulls down to
one side and an eyebrow twitches from time to time. The overall impression is
one of total stupidity. It’s something about the eyes, I think, no control over
those little muscles that push and pull and create expressions with fractions
of inches. I can’t do it and they call me a spastic. I’ve been in one institution
or another as long as I can remember. I don’t know my exact age. Either nobody
knows, or no one has bothered to tell me.

It’s fortunate that time passes
more swiftly as you get older. I used to find life an endless round of
frustration, trying to communicate, trying to show that I understood. But my
smile is grimace, my touch a blow and my speech ridiculous. No part of my body
will do what my brain instructs, I am imprisoned in an enemy.

I watch
television. We all watch television, it’s switched on after breakfast and stays
on until bedtime. I have learned a great deal from the television, in fact it
taught me to read. I started with the end. Then I earned to read other things,
like subtitles and advertisements and the back of other people’s newspapers.
Nobody has noticed. I would read all day long if only someone would turn the
pages.

So. The seasons come and they go,
and there will not be many more. It is spring now, and I hate the spring. Springtime
is the season of youth. They cuddled me when I was young, but an incontinent
old woman doesn’t inspire the same emotions. Autumn is my time, I can relate to
degeneration and death. Over seventy years have passed and I have never
achieved anything, never controlled my wretched body for long enough to make
one meaningful gesture.

Not all monologues are sad, but they are a very good vehicle
for small tragedies. The story above has the happiest ending the character
could hope for; she and her visitor meet another couple, a woman, pushing a
child in a wheelchair, and when the ducks take off they manage to smile at one
another. Something very small can mean everything in the right context, and the
monologue is the perfect vehicle – either on its own as a short story, or
within a book when you really need to get inside the head of one of your
characters.